Imperator, Augustus or Caesar? (Kaiser, Tsar etc)

[GurenGaaze]

I decided to ask here as I don't know how to navigate Reddit, on where to ask, or what their rules are. If none can answer my question, can someone make it a bit more clear to me? (like where I can actually ask this sorta thing.)
Anyway, on to what I am wondering

Situation:
I heard several times from many different places that Augustus was used by many Roman Emperors as a distinctive title. I have heard, but not as much with the same with Caesar (which comes from the first emperor, i'm sure, as well as his adoptive father) But I also read that Augustus (first emperor) changed his name to "Imperator" which is latin form of "Emperor". Or was used, the actual meaning was something else, but that's beside the point. Later empires that claim descent from the Romans called their emperors something alike, like "Kaiser" from Holy Roman Empire and "Tsar" from the Russian Empire. Which is another form of Caesar?

Question:
What was actually used, and how/when was it used?
All of this is confusing and I want to make it clear once and for all. And if Augustus or Imperator was what was used, then how does Caesar (Kaiser, Tsar) comes into the picture? wouldn't they rather use their culture form of Augustus or Imperator instead? Or did they use all, but at different periods?

 

[XYN]

I decided to ask here as I don't know how to navigate Reddit, on where to ask, or what their rules are. If none can answer my question, can someone make it a bit more clear to me? (like where I can actually ask this sorta thing.)
Anyway, on to what I am wondering

Situation:
I heard several times from many different places that Augustus was used by many Roman Emperors as a distinctive title. I have heard, but not as much with the same with Caesar (which comes from the first emperor, i'm sure, as well as his adoptive father) But I also read that Augustus (first emperor) changed his name to "Imperator" which is latin form of "Emperor". Or was used, the actual meaning was something else, but that's beside the point. Later empires that claim descent from the Romans called their emperors something alike, like "Kaiser" from Holy Roman Empire and "Tsar" from the Russian Empire. Which is another form of Caesar?

Question:
What was actually used, and how/when was it used?
All of this is confusing and I want to make it clear once and for all. And if Augustus or Imperator was what was used, then how does Caesar (Kaiser, Tsar) comes into the picture? wouldn't they rather use their culture form of Augustus or Imperator instead? Or did they use all, but at different periods?

Don't know about the German one, but for the Russian one it is something like this.

1) The title Tsar was used to proclaim the descent from the "Greek Tsardom" and "Roman Tsardom".
2) However, Tsar in Russian doesn't strictly mean "Emperor", it is more along the lines of "Supreme Ruler" - many rulers were called Tsar, including e.g. Tsar Solomon, or the Khans of the Horde, or even some of the early Kievan Rus princes;
3) While the Empire rulers are called both "Imperator" (direct borrowing from Latin) and "Tsar", the Tsardom rulers are not called "Imperator".
The semi-short title of the Emperor was:

By the God's grace, We, Imperator and Autocrat of the whole Russia, Moscovian, Kievan, Vladimirian, Novgorodian; Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Chersones Tauridian, Tsar of Georgia; Grand Prince of Finland and so on

While title of one of the Tsars before that was:

By the God's grace, We, Great Ruler, Tsar and Grand Prince Alexey Mikhailovich, Autocrat of the whole Great and Small and White Russia, Moscovian, Kievan, Vladimirian, Novgorodian, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Siberia, Ruler of Pskov and Grand Prince of Tver...

4) Tsar is also a Bulgarian title which AFAIK was used throughout the whole independent existence of the Bulgarian monarchy.

 

[GurenGaaze]

After discussing it with a friend of mine, my understanding of it is this:

There was really no officiall title at all, and emperors chosed the name they preffered and implemented it into their name, and not a title. These names include : Augustus, Caesar & Imperator. Because the first emperor known as "Augustus" changed his name several times from:

Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Adopted by Julius Caesar, but kept his last family name)
Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus (He was given the title Augustus)
Gaius Caesar Divi Filius Augustus (Son of God aka Son of Julius Caesar - he was seen as a god?)
Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus (Added Imperator to his name, meaning "Commander" of sorts)

And later emperors, both inside the Roman Empire and outside of it (Russian, HRE etc) chosed the names they liked the most, or the ones they thought was the most "right". Therefore we see all of them at different time periods, until one ultimately won and become an official title. Other empires also chosed what they preffered when they become an empire:

Russian = Tsar (From Caesar)
German = Kaiser (From Caesar)
French = Empereur (From Imperator, idk if it was early Franks or later French aka Napoleon?)
English = Emperor (From Empereur, which is from Emperator.)

In the Roman Empire we could see some emperors using 2, if not all 3 titles at the same time, as at this time, it was just names, not titles.

Can I assume all of this is correct?

 

[GurenGaaze]

Don't know about the German one, but for the Russian one it is something like this.

1) The title Tsar was used to proclaim the descent from the "Greek Tsardom" and "Roman Tsardom".
2) However, Tsar in Russian doesn't strictly mean "Emperor", it is more along the lines of "Supreme Ruler" - many rulers were called Tsar, including e.g. Tsar Solomon, or the Khans of the Horde, or even some of the early Kievan Rus princes;
3) While the Empire rulers are called both "Imperator" (direct borrowing from Latin) and "Tsar", the Tsardom rulers are not called "Imperator".
The semi-short title of the Emperor was:

While title of one of the Tsars before that was:

4) Tsar is also a Bulgarian title which AFAIK was used throughout the whole independent existence of the Bulgarian monarchy.

Oh, didn't know that about the Bulgarians. Also didn't know the meaning of Tsar except that it is a form of "Caesar"!

 

[Geriander]

Imperator was not a name but a descriptive title of someone holding imperium. Octavian first took the name Caesar and later Augustus.

Augustus developed into the title of the senior emperor while the junior emperor/heir was called Caesar.

 

[Kovax]

Note that the "C" in Caesar is pronounced as a "K" ("Ky-zer"), used likewise in "Celts". The Russians merged the syllables into "Czar" or "Tsar", while the Germans maintained the pronunciation almost intact, but altered the spelling (Kaiser). Considering that the palace guards in Byzantium were Rus over a long stretch of time, they likely took the idea for the title back with them. The Germans traced their "legitimacy" back to Rome, borrowing several of the titles (Caesar, Augustus, Flavius, Magnentius, and a handful of others), but only "Kaiser" survived until the 20th Century.

"Caesar" appears to have some original meaning as "leader", which Gaius Julius apparently had as a "nickname", while "Augustus" selected his own ruling name/title after the fact. After that, every Emperor wannabe felt the need to use one, the other, or both in their title to convey some sense of legitimacy, especially if there was very little. As later emperors accumulated the names of additional emperors in their own names/titles, they grew increasingly cumbersome, with upwards of half a dozen names.

 

[Geriander]

Note that the "C" in Caesar is pronounced as a "K" ("Ky-zer"), used likewise in "Celts". The Russians merged the syllables into "Czar" or "Tsar", while the Germans maintained the pronunciation almost intact, but altered the spelling (Kaiser). Considering that the palace guards in Byzantium were Rus over a long stretch of time, they likely took the idea for the title back with them. The Germans traced their "legitimacy" back to Rome, borrowing several of the titles (Caesar, Augustus, Flavius, Magnentius, and a handful of others), but only "Kaiser" survived until the 20th Century.

"Caesar" appears to have some original meaning as "leader", which Gaius Julius apparently had as a "nickname", while "Augustus" selected his own ruling name/title after the fact. After that, every Emperor wannabe felt the need to use one, the other, or both in their title to convey some sense of legitimacy, especially if there was very little. As later emperors accumulated the names of additional emperors in their own names/titles, they grew increasingly cumbersome, with upwards of half a dozen names.

The cognomen "Caesar" originated, according to Pliny the Elder, with an ancestor who was born by Caesarean section (from the Latin verb to cut, caedere, caes-).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar#Early_life_and_career

It was the real name of Gaius Julius Caesar and later adopted as a title to associate with him.

 

[Acheron]

I was once told that when a later Roman emperor divided the empire in two halves for administration, each half was to have an Augustus as the senior leader and a Caesar as the junior leader, so both were in Roman times apparently honorifics of different value.

According to wikipedia, Augustus translates to "majestic", "the increaser" or "venerable", so apparently it was a honorific, I guess when Octavian called himself Augustus we should think of it as "the majestic", not a a personal name. AFAIK, the names we know most Roman emperors of are more or less nicknames that makes it easier to tell them apart. I just did a quick check in wikipedia on some emperors and "Augustus" appeared in every single "official" full name.

 

[demanvanwezel]

Don't know about the German one, but for the Russian one it is something like this.

1) The title Tsar was used to proclaim the descent from the "Greek Tsardom" and "Roman Tsardom".
2) However, Tsar in Russian doesn't strictly mean "Emperor", it is more along the lines of "Supreme Ruler" - many rulers were called Tsar, including e.g. Tsar Solomon, or the Khans of the Horde, or even some of the early Kievan Rus princes;
3) While the Empire rulers are called both "Imperator" (direct borrowing from Latin) and "Tsar", the Tsardom rulers are not called "Imperator".
The semi-short title of the Emperor was:

While title of one of the Tsars before that was:

4) Tsar is also a Bulgarian title which AFAIK was used throughout the whole independent existence of the Bulgarian monarchy.

AFAIK the bulgarian leader was named caesar in 705 by Justinian II for aid in restoring him the throne and the romans afterwards had to to acknowledge that title many times over

the later russians began to call themselves czars from the moment they claimed the emperorship (by marrying a sister of a pretender to the byzantine throne after it's fall)

fun thing: the russians saw the title of caesar as more holy and higher then imperator because it was equivalent with greek "basileus" or king which was the title that god gave to david and thus king was a title granted by god and imperator merely by man (also the byzantines used autokrater instead of imperator, the later use of the title of imperator by peter the great was a deliberate importation from the west to clearly claim himself as emperor)

edit: the serbians also used the czar title when they claimed the emperorship

 

[Geriander]

The Holy Roman Emperors from Charlemagne onward appear to have used Imperator Augustus. Any idea why the junior title of Caesar ended up as the German word for emperor, i.e. Kaiser, if Augustus was the title German emperors actually used?

 

[demanvanwezel]

The Holy Roman Emperors from Charlemagne onward appear to have used Imperator Augustus. Any idea why the junior title of Caesar ended up as the German word for emperor, i.e. Kaiser, if Augustus was the title German emperors actually used?

that's a good question and with a surprising possibility, reading german wikipedia it seems to me like the word caesar was a loanword into german long before the HRE was a thing

bassicly the germans simply referred to the roman emperor as kaiser and so once they had their own roman emperor they proceeded to continue to do so in their native language despite him being called differently in latin

german text
Das althochdeutsche keisar leitet sich von dem lateinischen Eigennamen Caesar des Gaius Iulius Caesar ab, der in der Antike [kaisar] ausgesprochen wurde, im Griechischen [kaisar] oder [kaisaros]. Der Wandel des Eigennamens Caesar zum Herrschertitel Caesarerfolgte in einem achteinhalb Jahrzehnte dauernden Prozess vom Tod Gaius Iulius Caesars 44 v. Chr. bis zum Amtsantritt des Kaisers Claudius im Jahr 41 n. Christus. Zur selben Zeit entstand mit keisar bereits dieses vermutlich älteste lateinische Lehnwort im Germanischen. Erst im Mittelalter entstand dagegen die altslawische Entlehnung, die später zum Wort Zar führte.[2]

In den romanischen Sprachen bezeichnet dagegen ein von Imperator – dem Titel des militärischen Oberkommandeurs im Sinne von Feldherr, den ebenfalls bereits Augustus geführt hatte, der aber erst ab Nero fester Bestandteil der römisch-kaiserlichen Titulatur wurde – entlehntes Wort den Kaiser, so etwa das italienische imperatore, das spanische emperador oder das französische empereur, auf das auch das englische emperor zurückgeht. Auch im albanischen Wort mbret für „König“ ist noch das imperator zu erkennen.

In mittelhochdeutschen Schriften tauchen meist die Schreibweisen kayser, keiser oder keyser auf.

 

[Imgran]

Note that the "C" in Caesar is pronounced as a "K" ("Ky-zer"), used likewise in "Celts". The Russians merged the syllables into "Czar" or "Tsar", while the Germans maintained the pronunciation almost intact, but altered the spelling (Kaiser). Considering that the palace guards in Byzantium were Rus over a long stretch of time, they likely took the idea for the title back with them. The Germans traced their "legitimacy" back to Rome, borrowing several of the titles (Caesar, Augustus, Flavius, Magnentius, and a handful of others), but only "Kaiser" survived until the 20th Century.

"Caesar" appears to have some original meaning as "leader", which Gaius Julius apparently had as a "nickname", while "Augustus" selected his own ruling name/title after the fact. After that, every Emperor wannabe felt the need to use one, the other, or both in their title to convey some sense of legitimacy, especially if there was very little. As later emperors accumulated the names of additional emperors in their own names/titles, they grew increasingly cumbersome, with upwards of half a dozen names.

The Russian claim to a title of Czar/Tsar/Caesar runs a little deeper than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Palaiologina

The Russian czars, at least through the first dynasty of their transition from principality to Empire, claimed a direct line of blood to the last Byzantine emperors through the marriage between Sophia and Ivan III Rurikovich, who was Grand Prince of what at the time was the Principality of Muscovy. That gave them the legitimacy to build on the claim of being heirs to Rome by royal blood, and fed both their ambitions and the myths they told about themselves. Once the empire collapsed, Ivan claimed the title of Caesar by right of marriage, and that claim stands even today thanks to the surviving Romanov* pretenders.

Of course, the Russians tell different myths about themselves now, but it does need to be said that the Soviet Union is actually a better heir of the true Roman Empire at the height of its power, with all its glory and flaws, than the Romanov* dynasty it replaced, so there's that

*literally, "son of Rome" if my pitiful grasp of the Russian language hasn't utterly failed me

 

[chepaeff]

*literally, "son of Rome" if my pitiful grasp of the Russian language hasn't utterly failed me

Nooo, that's not how it translates nor was it ever claimed to have any connection to Rome. Just a surname taken by one of them, originated from his fathers patronym.

 

[XYN]

The Russian claim to a title of Czar/Tsar/Caesar runs a little deeper than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Palaiologina

The Russian czars, at least through the first dynasty of their transition from principality to Empire, claimed a direct line of blood to the last Byzantine emperors through the marriage between Sophia and Ivan III Rurikovich, who was Grand Prince of what at the time was the Principality of Muscovy. That gave them the legitimacy to build on the claim of being heirs to Rome by royal blood, and fed both their ambitions and the myths they told about themselves. Once the empire collapsed, Ivan claimed the title of Caesar by right of marriage, and that claim stands even today thanks to the surviving Romanov* pretenders.

Of course, the Russians tell different myths about themselves now, but it does need to be said that the Soviet Union is actually a better heir of the true Roman Empire at the height of its power, with all its glory and flaws, than the Romanov* dynasty it replaced, so there's that

*literally, "son of Rome" if my pitiful grasp of the Russian language hasn't utterly failed me

I struggle to understand where did you get these myths. "Romanovich" would mean "son of", and not "son of Rome", but "son of Roman". "Romanov" is a patronymic surname (the most common type of surname in Russia), it just means that the family is traced from someone called "Roman" (as in, the first name). And the name "Roman" existed and was used in these parts way, way before the Principality of Moscow itself.

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

The Russian claim to a title of Czar/Tsar/Caesar runs a little deeper than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Palaiologina

The Russian czars, at least through the first dynasty of their transition from principality to Empire, claimed a direct line of blood to the last Byzantine emperors through the marriage between Sophia and Ivan III Rurikovich, who was Grand Prince of what at the time was the Principality of Muscovy. That gave them the legitimacy to build on the claim of being heirs to Rome by royal blood, and fed both their ambitions and the myths they told about themselves. Once the empire collapsed, Ivan claimed the title of Caesar by right of marriage, and that claim stands even today thanks to the surviving Romanov* pretenders.

Of course, the Russians tell different myths about themselves now, but it does need to be said that the Soviet Union is actually a better heir of the true Roman Empire at the height of its power, with all its glory and flaws, than the Romanov* dynasty it replaced, so there's that

*literally, "son of Rome" if my pitiful grasp of the Russian language hasn't utterly failed me

How is a Communist State and the New Soviet Man a better heir to Rome than the Romanoffs and the Tzars which flow directly from Ivan III marriage to a Byzantine princess?

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

I struggle to understand where did you get these myths. "Romanovich" would mean "son of", and not "son of Rome", but "son of Roman". "Romanov" is a patronymic surname (the most common type of surname in Russia), it just means that the family is traced from someone called "Roman" (as in, the first name). And the name "Roman" existed and was used in these parts way, way before the Principality of Moscow itself.

Try: 'Son of the Romans'

Then add century after century of language evolution to the term.

It is obviously a link to Rome, not some guy named for Rome.

 

[XYN]

Try: 'Son of the Romans'

Then add century after century of language evolution to the term.

It is obviously a link to Rome, not some guy named for Rome.

Patriarch Filaret was the first one who used this surname, and his father was Romanovich...

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

Patriarch Filaret was the first one who used this surname, and his father was Romanovich...

And Romanovich still means 'son of Rome' or some variant thereof. I don't get your point.

 

[XYN]

And Romanovich still means 'son of Rome' or some variant thereof. I don't get your point.

"Romanovich" means "son of Roman". Like, literally. His father was "Roman".

The name "Roman" obviously has roots at "Rome", but that's all about it.

 

[Acheron]

Does that- vich ending in Russian generally mean "son of" whatever came before the -vich suffix?